Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams could not heal church's rifts

Dr Rowan Williams became, at 52, the youngest archbishop of Canterbury for nearly 200 years. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

As he heads back to academic life and the congenial berth of a Cambridge college mastership, which always seemed his likely destiny, Rowan Williams may be ruminating ruefully – rueful being almost a default mode for him – that it was his fate as archbishop of Canterbury to be head of the worldwide Anglican communion in interesting times.

He came to office 10 years ago as the great saviour, certainly for liberal Anglicans, of a divided, demoralised and muddled Church of England whose congregations were declining in numbers and ageing in years.

If anyone could revive the old institution it was thought that Williams, the 104th archbishop in direct line of succession since St Augustine's arrival in 597, could do the trick. He became, at 52, the youngest archbishop of Canterbury for nearly 200 years – a fact disguised by his bushy grey beard and even bushier eyebrows – the first archbishop for 130 years to have school-age children (state school educated, too) at Lambeth Palace and the first to be appointed from outside the Church of England since Cardinal Pole during the Reformation.

Rowan – everyone calls him just Rowan, a reflection of his unassuming and good natured approachability – was expected to be a breath of fresh air in a musty, hidebound institution. Not everyone was pleased – some ambitious bishops were resentful from the start that an outsider, then bishop of Monmouth and archbishop of the Church of Wales, one of the smallest dioceses in one of the smallest provinces in the Anglican communion, being appointed over their heads. Some gave him precious little support.

Williams was perhaps the most intellectually distinguished archbishop of recent times: a theologian and linguist, whose academic career had taken him from Cambridge to the Lady Margaret professorship of divinity at Oxford by his mid-30s, he was also regarded as a progressive.

Certainly in political terms he is: a self-proclaimed hairy leftie who once got arrested on a CND demo after scaling the perimeter fence at RAF Alconbury near Cambridge. An Anglo-Catholic in the high church tradition (he had once considered converting to Roman Catholicism), Williams had supported women's ordination and had even spoken in favour of changing attitudes to homosexuality, which was just becoming the most divisive issue in the church.

In writing and lectures, he had argued: "In what sense does the church actually proclaim good news to the homosexually inclined person who does not see their condition as a mark of rebellion or confusion? They are told they are to be tolerated, even respected; but their own account of themselves before God is not to be recognised."

In arguing the case for greater tolerance before his evangelical predecessor as archbishop, George Carey, Williams had asked him outright: "Who bears the cost of the church's stand?"

What liberal supporters of his appointment did not notice however was that, theologically, Williams was orthodox. Coming to Canterbury, he would see his role as carrying a diffuse and fractious church together – holding diversity in common, in church parlance – and, unusually for an archbishop, being first among equals rather than a leader. In this, he sat uncomfortably for tradition, rather than innovation.

While Williams's appointment in 2002 was warmly greeted by church progressives, conservatives, particularly from an increasingly militant faction of evangelicals, were suspicious and disinclined to be charitable, or to give him a break. Their tactics were occasionally breathtakingly mean. When the Welsh eisteddfod made him a bard in recognition of his poetry, his wearing of bardic robes was taken as a sign of paganism.

Some evangelicals said they would not invite him to preach in their churches because he would infect their congregations with false doctrine and, when the National Evangelical Anglican Congress was held in Blackpool in 2003, the archbishop was allowed to lead prayers, but not to speak or preach a sermon – and, even so, some retreated to a separate room so as not to pray with him.

It was Williams's misfortune to come to office just as the church's gay row was coming to the boil, with the election of the church's first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in the sister US Episcopal church. There are plenty of non-openly gay bishops, of course – so deep in the closet, it is said, that they are almost in Narnia – which gives a hypocritical tinge to the whole debate.

Williams, as archbishop of the mother church, was ex-officio head of the worldwide Anglican communion, 70 million strong, and he found himself haplessly caught in the middle as American conservatives made common cause with African fundamentalists and some English evangelicals in demanding the disciplining, or preferably expulsion, of gay-friendly, socially liberal churches such as the Episcopalians.

The row blew up in England with the appointment in 2003 of Canon Jeffrey John, a gay but celibate theologian partnered by another clergyman, as suffragan bishop of Reading. Williams, a fellow Welshman and old friend – they had been on the same delegation to see Carey – approved John's appointment, but backtracked rapidly in the face of noisy opposition by conservative evangelicals and their allies on the bench of bishops, and forced John to step down.

Liberals have never quite forgiven Williams's pusillanimity and his retreat has been exploited by conservatives ever since as proof that, as one Nigerian archbishop was heard to remark, "he'll do what we tell him".

The attempted solution to the threatened split has been the development of an Anglican covenant, of agreed doctrine and practice, designed to head off any individual church's innovation that might be disapproved of by others. This idea – inimical to the traditionally diverse spirit of Anglicanism – has been enthusiastically backed by Williams as "the only game in town" and a way out of the crisis, but is even now being shot down in flames by dioceses across the Church of England, with little chance of being adopted here: a humiliating defeat for the archbishop.

Almost as wretched have been the archbishop's attempts to reconcile Church of England differences over women bishops: a long-running saga that continues to bedevil relations. Although most of those opposed to women's ordination left nearly 20 years ago when the first female priests were appointed, a conservative, mainly high church, rump has remained, making common cause with their theological opposites, the conservative evangelicals, in opposing what they see as the taint of a female bishop's touch.

Despite his support for women's ordination, Williams has attempted to reconcile them too, not helped by Pope Benedict XVI's unilateral offer – without consultation — of a special place for the irreconcilables within the Catholic church. The archbishop's attempts to broker a compromise solution have also been rejected by the General Synod.

Outside the church, Williams's appointment was initially regarded positively in the media, after Carey's fussy, finger-wagging, ineffectual reign. The Sun even delivered Williams a hamper of Simpsons dolls after he said he was a fan of the cartoon series.

But there was soon a falling out: Williams's speeches were too opaque and, though genial, he made little attempt to understand the media. Increasingly he was portrayed as the Beardie Archbishop, verbose, wrong-headed, incomprehensible and indecisive.

It may be that no modern prelate can escape such a fate. When he was appointed by the Queen in 2002 Williams could have remained at Lambeth Palace until 2020. It is no surprise he has bailed out now.

Stephen Bates, a former Guardian religious affairs correspondent, is the author of A Church at War: Anglicans and Homosexuality (Hodder and Stoughton)